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Soccer against the Enemy: How the World’s Most Popular Sport Starts and Stops Wars, Fuels Revolutions, and Keeps Dictators in Power.

Kuper, Simon (author).

In 1992, Kuper set out to travel the world, looking for case studies to support the thesis in this book’s subtitle. He found a former East German who’d been hounded by the Stasi for his love of a West German team, a Slovakian president who made a nationalist statement with troops and truncheons in a soccer stadium, a Ukrainian club that exported nuclear missile parts, and much more. First published in England as Football against the Enemy (1994), this version has been updated (with a new preface, a postscript, and a chapter called “Global Game, Global Jihad”) and Americanized (the word soccer substituted for football, and occasional American references added). It’s an exceedingly interesting book and a good shelf mate for Franklin Foer’s How Soccer Explains the World (2004). But while Kuper ably blends travelogue, political research, and social investigation, the material’s lack of timeliness limits its effectiveness. And while the examples don’t always justify the bold thesis, it’s a worthy approach: “Enough has been written about soccer hooligans,” he writes. “Other fans are much more dangerous.”